imfallen_angel:2wolves: It's not what you have, it's what you do with it.

This...

I have probably a story that goes beyond the ordinary... in my youth they tested all the kids for a prototype program for the high IQ kids... and (of course as I'll telling this story), I got in without really wanting to, but they insisted.

The other kids were the typical stereotypes, but I was the "bad apple"... I had trouble in my classes, in large because of my outside-school life that was fairly stupid.. and I was bringing the average of the group down.

So they retested me, and due to their own rules, they were not able to kick me out as I was one of the highest scores (if not the highest, but they'd never tell).

I've done quite a few tests and I've always scored from around 150 to over 180.

Now the other kids of this group had been pumped that they'd be the future head of government, leaders of men, lawyers, doctors, etc. So far, I've yet to see or hear from a single one that did anything news worthy, if anything, the few I have come across during the years have all ended up with very mediocre lives.

While myself, I quit school, went to night school to get my diploma and some college, etc. and did a shiatload of stupid things, but overall, I have a lot of abilities to figure stuff out, build, plan, etc. but for life stuff, I did a lot of mistakes, but at least nothing that I haven't been able to fix at some point.

So when it comes to IQ, sure, according to these tests I'm a genius, and I can outdo a crapload of people for many things, I'm a faster thinker, and usually can calculate a lot more details than others do, but I've learned that there's so many stupid people, and so many that managed to get quite far in life and end up being the ones that one can end up bumping heads against, that it's better to just do your best, enjoy life, etc.

My biggest flaw is my memory for names, numbers, and some areas, while it's great for others, but as I get older, I've notices that instead of remembering things like other people state they do (or can), I find that I simply integrate things into some sort of global pool of knowledge without remembering how I learned it, from where, or who, just that I know things (and can easily look them up to confirm).

But still, because I can't learn things "by heart", I would never be able to be a doctor/surgeon or such things, even though I probably would be able to learn procedures, do them flawlessly and know everything inside out about it, but would not be able to do the paperwork. I love science and medicine and if life would have been different, I probably would have been someone that could have done huge things, but I was never pulled or pushed in the right direction.

So my point for all this is that your point is a very valid one, IQ is in very wide field and doesn't mean much... it really is a question of how this "IQ" works, and how one can use it.

I seriously would believe that some people that could be/could have been huge contributors to science, never get/got to because life didn't give them the chance, whatever the reasons.

almost to:dr but you just described my life which is more than a little bit weird.

I was informed of my very heigh IQ but never seemed to engage with academia.

I taught myself web development, and have a small web company in the UK instead if the doctor/lawyer/scientist I was told I would be.

The memory thing rings true with me. I have very different recall to anyone I know. Crap with names and dates but amazing in general knowledge.

Did you ever get tested for dyslexia? I did and I am. Super smart in some ways and dumb in others.

revrendjim:IQ scores become less valid as they get farther from the mean, simply because a lucky guess on one question can have a large effect. Once you are getting scores above about three standard deviations (145) all you can say with certainty is that the person probably has an IQ greater than 145. To give a precise numerical value is meaningless. Of course a highly intelligent person would know that.

Intelligence and education are different things.

An educated person should know that. Same with the value of the tests when they reach the edge of what they are attempting to measure.

An intelligent person can not be expected to understand statistics as the human mind is especially poor with them.

m00:Can one of the high-IQ geniuses on this thread give me a quantitative definition of "Intelligence"?

It is a series of discreet but related abilities which include short term memory, long term memory, pattern recognition, the ability to integrate new information into your current knowledge base. Depending on what you are trying to measure there are numerous possible quibbles regarding definitions of my previous terms. And naturally there are a bunch of other things you may wish to include when measuring intelligence.

TL:DR If you need to quantify it, do it yourself.

Uneducated, or educated stupid people confuse intelligence and education.

OscarTamerz:I admit that Hawkins was a genius with women and had something like 80 children but I was never impressed by either one of the Einstein brothers. Albert Einstein who uses the stage name Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein who goes by Super Dave aren't really at all amusing

You shut your whore mouth about Super Dave Thomas.

FTFA:I love my fake tan and fake nails as well so I guess I am a bit of an Essex girl in that sense.

Why? she studying A-levels so all her class mates are already in the top 1/3 of the population for their age, and the article doesn't mention if she is in an advanced class or not, so quite possibly they are all grouped in a higher subset of that 1/3

Jim_Callahan:runescorpio: drjekel_mrhyde: Flappyhead: Asia Carrera is a member of Mensa, just so we're clear on how meaningful IQ scores are these days.

This

Shes an actor. She got paid lots of money to take some dick and got really famous. Her career is likely more satisfying than most.Not sure how that shows unintelligence.

Not only that, she got out of porn while she was still at the top of her game, kept enough rights and made good enough deals that she's rich as hell, and largely manages her own properties and right. Pretty solid performance for any profession, and rather impressive for an actor of any stripe. Most hollywood types wouldn't get paid at all if they negotiated their own contracts like porn actors do.

And she also loves living in a nice conservative place where people get arrested for distributing porn.

It is called selection bias. People opting to take a Mensa test are generally pretty much above average intelligence. So the test could very easily be perfectly valid for the general population. Would you claim a reputable IQ test was invalid because people at Harvard all score above 115?

161? That's nice. It also means practically dick all unless you do something with it.

When I was in grade school I had tests administered to me the results of which meant that I got bussed to a different school every Friday to do "free form" learning...and my folks enrolled me in courses at the local university (which I flat out hated to go to but still did well at). It was only this past year that I finally asked my folks (I'm 46 now) what those grade school tests were. They were IQ tests as well and I supposedly scored higher than their scale could measure.

The story my mom tells is that they told the folks on testing day that the tests would be around an hour or so and then the tester brings me back around 20 minutes later. She's thinking "oh hell, did he get in trouble?" but the tester tells her that from what I was doing in the first few minutes, she skipped straight to the end set of questions and I apparently nailed pretty much all of them. She told the folks to take me to the local university and ask them to do an assessment which we apparently did (I don't recall it) but that produced similar results...and it meant extra school for me which I fairly despised.

You know what the end result of all the brainiac is? I develop software for internet apps. I didn't go into medicine to search for a cure for cancer. I didn't discover the Higgs Boson. I didn't end world hunger or anything like that. I did sit the LSAT with no prep and a week after I returned from my honeymoon and scored the IQ equivalent of a 155 on it...but I didn't go to law school. In fact, the high IQ actually hurt me because I never developed study skills until around my 2nd or 3rd year of university. What the high IQ does for me is allows me very quickly assemble all the parts to a situation and craft a solution to situations posed to that situation. That's all a high IQ really measures, in fact: the brain's ability to organize objects/thoughts/concepts in three dimensions. I call it mental gymnastics because that's the way it seems to me.

The point I'm making is: a high IQ is nothing more than a tool. In order to do something with it you have to have the motivation to do so and the discipline and training to make use of it effectively. Edison is credited with saying that invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. For those with high IQs, the formula may be not quite as unbalanced as that...but it's still weighted way heavily toward the "sweating" end of the spectrum. Good for this girl and her raw brain talent. Now, go learn to put it to good use.

ArkAngel:Lauren, of Loughton, Essex, is the daughter of a black cab driver

This could be part of the reason. Studies of black cab drivers show them to be unusually intelligent, being required to know the areas they drive extremely well. The test they have to pass averages 12 attempts and almost three years of practice.

FizixJunkee:Flappyhead: Asia Carrera is a member of Mensa, just so we're clear on how meaningful IQ scores are these days.

I watched the documentary, "After Porn Ends", and it interviewed Asia. She seemed very Aspie to me. I have no problem believing that she's smarter than the average bear.

\the doc streams on Netflix if you're interested

She is indeed very smart: in the early days of the web, she taught herself HTML and built her own websitefrom the server up, and I believe she still maintains it herself.

I wouldn't say she's an Aspergers sufferer, but she is definitely shy and not comfortable meetingstrangers. By her own admission she didn't go into feature dancing (where porno stars make most oftheir money) for precisely that reason.

I was lucky enough to meet her at one of her rare personal appearances, and while she was very friendlyand accomodating to her fans, she was also never very far from her VERY large body guard.

/Was at Rutgers the same time she was, but doesn't remember ever meeting her.

craig328:The point I'm making is: a high IQ is nothing more than a tool. In order to do something with it you have to have the motivation to do so and the discipline and training to make use of it effectively. Edison is credited with saying that invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. For those with high IQs, the formula may be not quite as unbalanced as that...but it's still weighted way heavily toward the "sweating" end of the spectrum. Good for this girl and her raw brain talent. Now, go learn to put it to good use.

A whole lot of this. In fact without looking at the rest of this thread, I can guess that many others have made the same point. I remember from previous threads that there are at least a dozen (closer to two dozen) Farkers who scored high on IQ tests or were in advanced education (myself included) who've gone on to do... Not much. A lot of programming/office types as I recall.

I really really really wish schools were oriented toward teaching children, especially higher IQ children, to not only identify what they want to do, but how to achieve it with good, hard work. I think we'd see more tangible results from of our purportedly extra-tasty brains.

gumpy:almost to:dr but you just described my life which is more than a little bit weird.

I was informed of my very heigh IQ but never seemed to engage with academia.

I taught myself web development, and have a small web company in the UK instead if the doctor/lawyer/scientist I was told I would be.

The memory thing rings true with me. I have very different recall to anyone I know. Crap with names and dates but amazing in general knowledge.

Did you ever get tested for dyslexia? I did and I am. Super smart in some ways and dumb in others.

Funny thing... as I get older, I make more typos that I've ever done in my life... such as I think one thing and the fingers go with a different word... brought it up to the doctor last year (about dyslexia as from what I read on it, I probably do have it)... response was that such testing is only done private and quite expensive and wouldn't really change anything... so now I have to double check everything I write more than ever. Other issues is that I think of too many things at the same time and unless I write something down write away, odds are I'll forget (temporarily most times) what it was. Annoying as crap.

And yup... lots of things I pick up instantly, I can improvise faster than others, improve on things, visualize things in my head very clearly and fast, but some things, like doing my tax return and management duties (paperwork) drives me nuts and I just can't get into it.

At some point I got myself to do triple digit calculations in my head, but I've stopped practicing doing that, but at least I know that I technically can do it if I push hard enough, probably would be able to go further too, but then the memory issues kicks in and I forget my place.

But as I said, I've done a lot of stupid things in life (relationships, choices of partners, career, etc.).

One thing I have realized is that I do have an "aura" that pushes people away and building friendships isn't easy... not that I'm an arse or anything, quite the opposite, I'm very friendly, helpful, but I tend to end up being the guy that helps someone out during their time of need, and then with their lives back on track, they move on. I used to get used, and feel used, but in time I've learned to able it much better and help out as much as I can but no longer get too involved and know where and where to draw lines.

My wife is very similar, and her life was very rough before I came along and she's seen this, but she does find it more difficult than I do, but I had a much more different life than she did, especially the relationship with her parents. But without hesitation, I can easily say that she is one of the smartest person I've known in my life where she also is able to pick just about any skills for anything that she gets into, but like myself, she has certain traits that prevents her from pushing it further.

I really really really wish schools were oriented toward teaching children, especially higher IQ children, to not only identify what they want to do, but how to achieve it with good, hard work. I think we'd see more tangible results from of our purportedly extra-tasty brains.

Holy shiat, this.

Our unwillingness to develop gifted students properly is one of the biggest failures of our educational system (if not the biggest).

revrendjim:IQ scores become less valid as they get farther from the mean, simply because a lucky guess on one question can have a large effect. Once you are getting scores above about three standard deviations (145) all you can say with certainty is that the person probably has an IQ greater than 145. To give a precise numerical value is meaningless. Of course a highly intelligent person would know that.

m00:Can one of the high-IQ geniuses on this thread give me a quantitative definition of "Intelligence"?

I'd go with... add your skills base, to the amount of valuable work you can accomplish, and balance it with the social blunders you do, and then add any serious accomplishments you have managed to do that would qualify as enduring efforts.

In other words, if you can do stuff well, then that's great. If you have trouble doing stuff but still think that you're smart, it's time for a reality check.

Someone nice that does nice things, even if they are very simple ends up being a lot smarter in my books than someone that can do a bunch of things, not do them very well but thinks that they're the shiats anyways.

I really really really wish schools were oriented toward teaching children, especially higher IQ children, to not only identify what they want to do, but how to achieve it with good, hard work. I think we'd see more tangible results from of our purportedly extra-tasty brains.

Holy shiat, this.

Our unwillingness to develop gifted students properly is one of the biggest failures of our educational system (if not the biggest).

derp... if you go and read my Weeners, I covered this...

They have tried doing this... I was in my country's prototype group and it failed astronomical... they had no clue how do to it.

The head of this project managed to become one of the people that I will always regard with bad memories for the stupidity she exuded but blind to.

Decades later, I look back and still see how smarter I was then compared to her and the other adults involved and I can only wish that if I had the experience and knowledge I now possess, I would have scared the living crap of them a lot more than I did them.. My intelligence was raw, untempered, inexperienced and I would have seriously needed a lot more than they ever could have provided. The only teacher I remember with fondness was one that got screwed over and over, her job always on the edge, etc. but she was the only one that actually cared and wanted to push and would respect the kids. I should try to see if she's still around.. and thank her.

revrendjim:IQ scores become less valid as they get farther from the mean, simply because a lucky guess on one question can have a large effect. Once you are getting scores above about three standard deviations (145) all you can say with certainty is that the person probably has an IQ greater than 145. To give a precise numerical value is meaningless. Of course a highly intelligent person would know that.

Not exactly true. The majority of instruments are made for three standard deviations above and below the mean, and once the matrices show something higher than 150 you ought to confirm with a different instrument designed for this. As to lucky guesses, raw score does not translate in a fixed ratio to intelligence score but instead represents the increasing difference between higher and lower scores. Further, some instruments look for consistency in response, with a lucky guess continuing the assessment for longer but not contributing to an increased score in isolation.

mamoru:Considering that IQ scores are (as I understand it) based on the current population, and the average is always 100, and surely the methods of measuring it have changed, is it even meaningful at all to compare a current IQ score with those of another time period?

Yes, this is meaningful to suggest similarity of general intellectual aptitude because while there are apparently substantial increases over time the difference from the mean captures the developmental nature of intelligence. Thus, while a modern 160 would score much higher on a yesteryear instrument, and a yesteryear 160 would score much lower on a modern instrument, this is due to development in the period. A yesteryear 160, say Einstein, who was instead born in the present should have a development more in line with the present which would give him a modern 160, and the same with this girl being born in the 1880s. Direct comparison of the numbers would be inaccurate to do, but this is because this would be an inaccurate conception of intelligence as static.

Mr. Shabooboo:Ya, but can she manipulate knowledge into the abstract the way that Einstein and Hawking do?

No as IQ is a reflection of cognitive age, and cognitive development partially reflects ability to handle abstraction from the sheer inability to great mastery.

Krazikarl:People who who in fields with lots of really smart people don't ever think about stupid IQ tests. Go hang out with a bunch of astrophysicists, or particle physicists, or brain surgeons, or whatever. You won't hear anybody rambling on about scores that they got on a test that is poorly calibrated for anybody over 140 or so anyway.

I think about such instruments, but because this is part of my profession and more for the pleasure of the state labeling system than my own need to have a number.

Aidan:I really really really wish schools were oriented toward teaching children, especially higher IQ children, to not only identify what they want to do, but how to achieve it with good, hard work. I think we'd see more tangible results from of our purportedly extra-tasty brains.

Getting appropriate services into schools for gifted is exactly why I do advocacy, research, program coordination, and teaching. However, this is a protracted fight, especially without a federal mandate to identify, fund, service, etc., in schools.

Aidan:I really really really wish schools were oriented toward teaching children, especially higher IQ children, to not only identify what they want to do, but how to achieve it with good, hard work. I think we'd see more tangible results from of our purportedly extra-tasty brains.

Ah, but you see, if you did that then you would be very clearly adjudging some students as being "smarter" or "better" than other students. This, naturally, is a giant no-no in public education these days...what with the emphasis on self esteem and so on. It's important that nobody be given the impression that they're not equal with everyone else. I mean, what would it say to some kids that their best career prospects are in the medical or science fields while some other kids are told they should be baristas whilst they develop their hip hop routine?